RISE UP: CELEBRATING YOUNG LEADER ACTIVISTS – Reyna Montoya, age 27

From the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War protests and the fight for women’s rights, the youth of America have been at the forefront of leading and advocating for social change, and the young people of today are no different. In a new series titled RISE UP: Celebrating Young Leader Activists, Yahoo News profiles five up-and-coming leaders from the Gen Z and millennial generations, with our second installment featuring 27-year-old Reyna Montoya of Gilbert, Az.

In 2003, when Reyna Montoya was 13 years old, her family fled their homeland of Mexico for the safety and security of the United States. Though she was a smart student gifted in math, Reyna found herself falling behind in school in her new home of Arizona: “Getting here and not knowing the language, and kids making fun of me … that was something that really hurt me.” Growing up, she resented her parents for uprooting her from Mexico. But nine years later, when her father was detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, Reyna learned the truth of why they crossed the border in the first place.

“My dad unfortunately had been kidnapped back in Tijuana,” explains Reyna. “And when he went to the authorities, they pretty much threatened him — if he would come back again, they would kill him and his family.”

“I cannot even fathom what was going through his mind when he had to make that brave decision of leaving everything he knew just to make sure that he had safety for his family.”

Reyna was 22 when she learned of her father’s arrest by ICE, and she immediately felt responsible for her younger siblings. She tears up when she recounts having to comfort her 5-year-old sister, trying to answer her questions of “Where’s daddy? Where’s daddy?”

“It was really hurtful having to explain to a 5-year-old all these complicated laws,” says Reyna, “and for her to just really not know what happened.” Reyna’s father was not released until nine months later.

Like him, Reyna is an undocumented immigrant, but unlike her father she’s a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that permits those who immigrated illegally as children to reside and work in the country. For the last few years, she has participated in protests and marches advocating for herself and other Latinx immigrants. In 2016, Reyna founded Aliento, a nonprofit organization that focuses on undocumented youth and families and aims to transform trauma into action through the arts, workshops, leadership development, and advocacy.

“Aliento literally translates into ‘breath,’” she explains, “but when you give aliento to someone, it’s like giving words of encouragement.”

For Reyna, it was important to create a space where the younger generation of Latinx immigrants could find the words to navigate tough conversations like the one she had with her sister. “How can we really talk about something that pains us, so we can actually move forward?”

In the last few years, Reyna has been featured in media outlets such as NBC News and Univision, and in January 2018 she was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur. Although she welcomes the focus on herself, she hopes for more attention on her cause: “Good leadership, for me, means that you’re actually enabling other people to find their own inner voice and inner power. I think that so often we think about leaders as this charismatic figure that is bringing masses of people together. But we as leaders need to be able to create spaces where other people can find their inner voice, and their inner power.”

“I really hope that moving forward it’s not only about [my] activism but we really start taking responsibility as a nation, and really start seeing in each other how we’re harming each other.”